This volume elucidates the various keys needed to correctly interpret, understand, and contemplate Buddhist teachings, including the secret teachings of the Vajrayana. Explain how the teachings are to be integrated into life through the practice of meditation, which unites a state of one-pointed attention with profound insight into emptiness.

This is one of the most thorough introductions to the Tibetan Buddhist world view ever published. At the same time it is also one of the most accessible. Presents Tibetan Buddhism in its traditional form but also shows how the Tibetan traditions are applicable to problems and challenges of modern life in the West.

Twenty discourses from the Pali Canon - including those most essential to the study and teaching of early Buddhism - are provided in fresh translations, accompanied by introductions that highlight the main themes and set the ideas presented in the context of wider philosophical and religious issues.